A Few Tips for [School of Hard Knocks]

Many of my guildies are having trouble with this achievement as they are not PvP'ers and hardly know Arathi Basin from Alterac Valley. Me? Well, lets just say I'm 4 for 4 on my attempts. It was faster for me to complete than going through the orphan quest chain to get the pet.

That being said, these quests can be maddeningly difficult if you don't know how to approach each requirement. For those not in the 'know', here are the for requirements:

• Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
• Assault a flag in Arathi Basin
• Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
• Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

Understandably, the best means is to grab a team and go for the gold, but let's go through each one and identify other ways to get them done.

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
The obvious way to get this done is to wait in the middle of EotS and click like mad when the flag respawns. Unfortunately, this is pretty fruitless as with the onslaught of fellow badge hunters plaguing Battlegrounds right now trying to get this requirement done. Your entire team AND the entire OPPOSING team is likely sitting in the middle waiting to click. The alternative to this middle-of the map stupidity is to gank the flag carrier. Usually, flag carriers run solo, so if you can nab him/her en route to their tower, you can usually grab the flag unfettered.

Another old school strategy is to run with a buddy who has one of those huge mammoth mounts. He rides up to the flag and stands on top of it while you stand inside his mount and grab the flag. Most players aren't savvy enough to find you through the mammoth so you can usually get away with the grab. This also works well in AB.

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to capture the flag in AB, but, one of the best ways of accomplishing this to veer from the beaten path. Yes, you could race to LM or GM or Stables and get that cap before anyone else, but if the opposing faction has the same idea, there will generally be people there vying for that cap. If you're alone or faster than the rest, consider yourself lucky (Yes, luck does have a part in all of this). An alternative to the race mentality is to try for the 'back cap'. Most pug BG's tend to have a herd mentality. As such, an effective strategy is to watch a huge pack of opponents leave a node and swoop in behind them. An effective tool for this strategy is some means of slow falling. Whether it's the spell Slow Fall or Levitate, chain chugging Noggenfogger Elixirs for the slow fall ability or using the Sha'tari Skyguard rep cape or Engineering cape tinker, dropping into the Blacksmith from Lumber Mill or dropping into the Gold Mine from the road above can take opponents by surprise. Similarily, stealthing or invisibility abilities or effects can accomplish the same goal. When going the stealth route, there are two important reminders to keep in mind: 1) While you may be stealthed, your orphan is not and 2) You cannot bring your orphan out while you are in combat. Make sure that you come out of stealth by summoning your orphan and then clicking on the flag.

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
Sadly, the best method here is to race. However, instead of racing for the first two and closest towers, race for the final two towers. The Horde towers are easily assaultable as they provide cover to those within. However, the Alliance towers may or may not have spots where you can stand and cap without interruption. If you are trying for a tower that does not have such 'free cap' spots, make sure you are not the first one to aggro the archers. It is often better to be the second target so that you can go in and cap freely. If you are the first one into the tower and you have some way of losing aggro, you can be sneaky and wait till your teammate starts capping, at which point, you Vanish/Feign Death/etc. and let him get all the arrows while you quickly cap the tower. Sometimes, someone else just has to take one for the team, no?

Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch
This is probably one of the easiest purely because your typical player thinks of this as a 2 part process: 1) Kill flag carrier and 2) Grab flag. In actuality, it's just 1) Grab flag. When working for this requirement, it's important to stay mobile and stand on top of the flag carrier. If you have a PvP trinket, use it whenever a crowd controlling effect moves you away from the flag carrier. If you don't have a PvP trinket, go to Hellfire Peninsula, complete the daily quest and get a free 5 min cooldown PvP trinket. Why stay on top of the flag carrier? Well, chances are, someone else is going to kill the target with huge nukes while you spam instants and stay in close range. It's important that once that kill is about to happen, you spam click the area where the flag carrier is. Click early if you have to.

Additionally, it may be prudent to spec into a real PvP spec or at least one that has access to crowd control. Most WSG's have at least one healer per team and the healers are usually running with the flag carrier. If this is the case, use your crowd controlling abilities on the healers. If you have a ranged crowd control ability, make a focus macro such as /cast [target=focus] Crowd Control Ability. Then as the flag carrier and his pocket healer run up, target the healer, right click their portrait and set them as your focus or target them and type /focus. Then as your team is taking the flag carrier down, mash your macro if you see the target getting low on health. This will ensure that the flag carrier dies and you get a shot at grabbing the flag. Wyvern Sting, Scattershot, Psychic Horror, Silence, Improved Counterspell, POM Polymorph, Nature's Swiftness Cyclone, Deathcoil, Blind, Strangulate, Gnaw, Pet Charge, Repentence, Hammer of Justice, Avenger's Shield, blah blah blah.. the list goes on and on.

The most important thing is to keep positive and keep trying. Who knows? You might even enjoy slumming it in the BG's with the PvPers.

First (and Last?) Substantial Step into Ulduar

This past Friday, a few friends and I picked up 2 PUG tanks and headed into Ulduar Normal. We started with 2 healers, 3 melee, and 3 casters. Of the 10 characters, 2 were alts.

How far did we get?

8 bosses down before sleep demands were too insistent to be ignored.

We eventually traded our Warlock buddy for a third healer after the first 4 bosses. Kologarn was just a bit too bursty for just 2 healers to manage. I think we 9 manned Ignis, 8 manned Auriaya (2 died on the pull), and pretty much 1 shot every boss except Freya and Thorim (bad healing assignments).

The funny part of this is that aside from one of the tanks (the alt of a raider in a more progressed guild), none of the rest of us had seen any of these bosses beyond Deconstructor. As such, our pre pull pep talks consisted of "Well, wowhead says ..."

I think part of the success in this impromptu run was due to the fact that nearly all of the boss mechanics we saw have been experienced in other encounters or were easily understandable to allow for quick adaptations. Because of this, Ulduar seemed kind of old. Not old in the sense of "I can't believe I'm still grinding Karazhan for badges", but old in the sense of "I've seen this before." or "What's the gimmick this time?"

I mention in the title of this post that this might be my last serious step into Ulduar, mainly because of this feeling that Ulduar is already 'old'. I've learned alot of boss mechanics in my time spent in Azeroth and in other games, and sadly, they don't wow me any more (pardon the pun). Bosses don't feel like epic battles anymore, because in my mind, they've all been translated into brief sets of instructions like: Control the adds, Run the gauntlet, Don't stand in the lightning. Anything that can be distilled down to it's essence becomes less special.

In a way, I don't quite mind this shift in attitude towards raiding. Does it bother me that I won't have access to the top PvE gear in the game? A little bit. But to be honest, it's a relief, because now I can get to bed before 1 AM on raid nights.

And being awake during the day is truly a good thing.

Out Of PvP Blogs

It's always interesting for me to hear another's' take on PvP, as tales of getting chain ganked and stories of getting 2 shot are often told with vile revulsion and bitter complaints. Me, I like to bathe in the [Tears of Epic QQ], but eventually even that get's pretty old and worn out. As such, it's quite rare to find a well written blog that contains some positive reflections on WoW PvP.

Sadly, Out Of Mana, shut down yesterday and the number of PvP friendly blogs with wit and tasteful potty language has been reduced by one. Megan has been on my blogroll for quite some time and I wish her the best, because it seems as though she's taken a step back from tunnelvisioning WoW to see what she could be missing out there in the world of RL.

... and the world can always use less tunnelvisioning

Raid Healing: Empowered Renew is Garbage.

An anonymous reader recently asked:

I'd like to hear more about empowered renew. I was not using it
much pre 3.1, but was thinking the upfront instant heal would make it a bit more
exciting.

To address the request a bit better than just saying "Renew is now just a heal over time (hot) to buffer Tank damage and Empowered Renew is a poor way to spend 3 talent points", lets first look at how the non-Empowered Renew is best used and then see why Empowered Renew isn't as empowering as it seems.

Usage of non-Empowered Renew:

Renew has been predominantly used a pre-hot to keep up on someone taking consistent damage (ie: Tank) or on someone who's about to take damage. The limitations of the spell are such that it a) costs a decent chunk of mana b) requires a long period of time to apply the full healing and c) limits the amount of time one can stay oo5SR if they use it as a pre-hot on multiple teammates. Understandably, Renew becomes less efficient if it doesn't provide it's full healing.

Of course, you knew that already.

So where does Renew fit?

Unfortunately, the answer is: Pretty much only on the Tanks.

The reality of raid healing in many raids is that hots on non-Tanks never tick to full because healers would rather spend mana to top someone off 'now' with additional heals than watch a raider's health bar slowly tick to full over the next 10 seconds. I like to call it 'Healer Anxiety'. Healer Anxiety is a huge issue because it has the potential to waste a raid's mana, through massive overheal and unfortunately, the easy entry level WotLK content has largely encouraged healers to play 'whack-a-mole' in order to boost their healing meters as their healing assignments are usually at zero risk of dying.

Unfortunately, the current raid content is different from pre 3.1 as raid damage comes fast and plentiful, and spending 4.5 seconds and over 1k mana over 3 GCDs to Renew 3 raid targets as a pre-hot becomes largely irrelevant because your next few casts contain Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing, the Resto Shamans are bombing Chain Heal after Chain Heal and the Resto Druids are mashing Wild Growth, Nourish and pre-hotting with a faster ticking and far more efficient Lifebloom.

The bottom line is that Renew just doesn't cut it for both mana conservation nor raid healing because it takes too long to apply its full effect across multiple targets and the value of the healing ticks that it provides is woefully small in comparison to the amount of incoming damage the raid is receiving; Ulduar raid damage is nothing to sneeze at.

What about Empowered Renew?

Empowered Renew grants a bit more oomph in each of Renew's ticks but more importantly, it turns Renew from a proactive spell to a reactive spell. Understandably, players are now encouraged to use it after teammates have already taken damage. This is good, right?

Not really.

The main problem with turning Renew into a reactive spell is that it's initial heal doesn't heal enough for the investment of 3 talent points. Effectively, those 3 talent points generate an initial instant heal for a bit more than 1k. While this initial heal is an okay buffer heal so that the rest of the ticks can bring the target towards full health, the ironic aspect of Empowered Renew is that when used reactively on multiple targets, the ticks have even less time to apply effective healing before Healing Anxiety sets in.

As an example, let's compare a Priest that proactively Renews 2 targets before a raid damage occurs and a Priest that reactively uses Empowered Renew. Let's arbitrarily say that the proactive Priest gets 3 ticks from both Renews before Healing Anxiety kicks in and all of the raid damage is caught up. Essentially, by taking Empowered Renew, the Priest is trading a normal Renew tick for the initial heal and subsequent ticks being a bit stronger. This is okay because this is a bit more healing than the proactive Priest would provide on his first Renew. However, if the reactive Priest casts a second Empowered Renew a GCD after applying the first Empowered Renew, the second target actually loses a tick of healing, if compared to a proactive Renew, because there will be less time allotted for the second Empowered Renew to tick before Healing Anxiety kicks in.

In addition, the proactive Priest can provide further healing while the reactive Priest is casting his Empowered Renews.

Ostensibly, the best utilization of Empowered Renew as a raid heal would be to ignore the initial heal and use Empowered Renew as a proactive hot because of the stronger tick. But, the big question for players looking to maximize their builds then becomes, "Is it worth it to spend 3 talent points to get 15% more of your bonus healing effects on a hot that's unlikely to fully tick out?"

For me, that answer is No.

Amusingly, I don't even take Improved Renew for the very same reason.

Ulduar Holy Priest First Impressions

Last night was the guild's first foray into Ulduar as a 25 man team. Unfortunately, we've been hit pretty hard by attrition and by people leaving for another guild experience. Understandably, bringing in our top 25 wasn't in the cards, and in some cases, the level of attentiveness and inexperience was painfully evident.

That being said, I'm happy that Uld25 is not a pushover instance for the majority of guilds. I don't necessarily like chain wiping, but I like the fact that there's a bit of a challenge involved and people have to pay attention. It truly separates out the good players from the terrible. Will the vast majority of the average guilds kill Yoggy before Icecrown Citadel comes out? Time will only tell.

For our Uld25 jaunt, I walked into the raid as a Deep Holy spec. I ended up speccing 18/53/0, skipping Imp Fort (another Priest had it) on the Disc Tree and making sure I picked up 3/3 Mental Agility. On the Holy side, I went all the way down to Guardian Angel and made sure I picked up Divine Providence, Serendipity, Holy Concentration, Surge of Light, Holy Reach and Healing Prayers. I skipped Test of Faith and Improved Renew. I'm sure you can fill in the rest of the talents.

To be clear, the goal of this spec was to maximize raid healing and ensuring that my spells didn't run me dry in seconds flat. The main issue with this spec is that Guardian Angel is the 51 point talent, thus forcing the player to either choose between the 'Get Out Of Jail Free Card' or Mental Strength. I'll highlight mana issues later on after I get through the performance of the spec.

As for Gear, I replaced as much of my high Crit/no Spirit gear with my low Crit/high Spirit gear as possible. It was rough realizing that much of my gear was optimized for Disc and the fact that I've been relying on Mental Strength to bump my mana pool up for Replenishment abuse. The goal of replacing non-Spirit gear with my old Spirit heavy pieces was to try to maximize my passive regen from Holy Concentration procs. I believe that even with swapping out 5 pieces of Disc gear, I still had ~25% unbuffed Holy Crit. Not bad, but not great either.

Glyph-wise, I rolled with Glyphs of Guardian Spirit, Flash Heal, and Circle of Healing.

So how did the spec play?

Really, really well for the 2 bosses the raid encountered: Deconstructor & Razorscale.

The nature of the spec is to spam instant spells, but also to keep up a Serendipity stack. What this means is that between Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and using Surge of Light Procs to raid heal (I was not assigned to Tank heal), Flash Heal was liberally used to set up for some huge Greater Heals or Prayer of Healings. I found that I didn't utilize PW: Shield as much, thus allowing the Disc Priest to freely shield whomever they needed to. Sadly, Renew seems to be a very situational heal, unlike the 'go to' nature of Rejuvenation for a Resto Druid. and was cut out of the build prior to go time. My testing showed that Empowered Renew was pretty poor and as such I didn't rely on it at all.

Serendipity seems to be one of the hidden gems of 3.1, as it allowed me to send out 1.7 second cast time Prayer of Healings/Greater Heals with virtually no substantial amounts of haste gear. Prayer of Healing, when used with Holy Reach, Divine Providence and Healing Prayers, ends up being reasonable in cost with a huge radius. As long as people were grouped up intelligently (melee with melee, casters with casters) and positioned with their groups, I could always hit everyone in the group.

Mana wise, the build was reasonably okay. My only gripe is that aforementioned trade off between Guardian Angel and Divine Providence for Mental Strength as this build could definitely benefit more from Replenishment. Unsurprisingly, the throughput of this spec is enormous. Circle of Healing is nearly aways able to proc a Surge of Light for that quick spot heal (aka getting hit twice by Frostfire Bolts from Razorscale) and a easily refreshable Serendipity 3 stack can be huge for that emergency single target or AOE heal. In those situations where I needed to just sit and spam Flash Heal, I could sustain it reasonably well. I did run the risk of running oom earlier than I expected, however, those situations were usually caused by people not paying attention to the Light/Gravity Bombs or players who liked to grab aggro before the tanks during the add phase of Razorscale.

Adjustments: In my mind, there are 2 reasonably good Holy raid healing specs. The first is the one I showed with Guardian Angel. The second is a 24/47/0 build that grabs 4/5 Mental Strength and sacrifices 5/5 Divine Providence and Guardian Angel. The benefit of the first spec (GA), is that with the Glyph of Guardian Angel, you can either save a Tank or save the Raid, by allowing more healers to focus on the Raid instead of the Tank. 10k critical Flash Heals are amazing and go a long way towards shifting healing responsibilities on the fly. If the GA target doesn't die, you get to do it again one minute later.

The second spec gives up a lower cooldown to Prayer of Mending and Cheaper AOE heals for more mana. 4/5 Mental Strength is 12% more mana, so for someone with, say... 17k mana, you're looking at a gain of ~2k mana. That 2k Mana is approximately 25more MP5 from Replenishment, which definitely helps in this day and age of lowered oo5SR regen. In addition to those perks, this second spec also benefits from more mana returned from Shadowfiend as well as from Hymn of Hope such that mana should be less of an overall issue than with the GA spec. This spec could even Glyph for Prayer of Healing and further improve the strength of its AOE heals.

Which one do I prefer? I really like the fluidity of the GA spec over the Mental Strength spec. This is mostly because I really like Guardian Angel. I'm not entirely sure of the gemming strategy for Deep Holy, but I suspect that I'll aim for ~30% Crit unbuffed and ensure that I have a good amount of spirit in every slot. I'll keep testing and tweaking and praying that Blizz will lower Guardian Angel to the 41 point talent slot. that would be amazingly awesome.